Tim Zasada is Reavis High School's new football coach.
The current T.F. North girls basketball coach and assistant football coach accepted the position Friday morning.
He succeeds Jim McDonough, who resigned after going 0-9 this season and 28-56 in nine years at the Burbank school.
"I am really excited not just to coach football again," Zasada said, "but to do what I do best, and that is to rejuvenate programs."
The Rams last made the playoffs in 2007, when they finished 7-3. Reavis was a power in the 1970s and early 1980s. Its 1982 team won the Class 6A state championship, and the 1980 and 1981 teams finished second under Dennis Wierzal.
Zasada grew up in Calumet City but attended Hammond High where he played for his dad, Tom, a Hammond Hall of Fame member. He was on the 1988 team that lost to a Rick Mirer-led Goshen team in an Indiana Class 4A semistate.
Zasada returned to his alma mater and was the football coach in 1999 and 2000, going 14-10. His 2000 team upset Griffith to win a Class 4A sectional title before falling to Plymouth in a regional contest.
"I am fired up and ready to push myself again to do what it takes to give the school a winning program," Zasada said of the job at Reavis.
He also was Hammond's head girls basketball coach for 2000-01 before moving to T.F. North.
He took over a program that was 4-41 the previous five years and had not had a winning season since 1984 when the Meteors qualified for the Illinois playoffs. His 2001 team went 4-5, but he made the playoffs four of the next five years, going 34-25. He stepped down after 2006 but returned in 2009 as the offensive coordinator for Artie Rogers, a Morton grad and former Clark football coach.
In girls basketball, he built North into a south suburban power as he is 154-44 after beating Oak Lawn on Thursday. The Meteors won three conference titles and four regional titles.
He was The Times' Indiana football coach of the year in 2000, and Illinois football coach of the year in 2002 and 2004. He also has been the Illinois girls basketball coach of the year in 2006 and 2011.
His hiring is pending District 220 board approval at its Tuesday meeting.
"I think there is talent there," Zasada said, "and the Reavis administration wants a successful athletic program."
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